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“Of course this is aboutthat!” His tone is whip-sharp and dripping with the resentment he’s been suppressing all these years. “Do you remember the months after Leonid and Alina died?”
Fyodor flinches violently. “Don’t—”
“You wanted to know why. I’m telling you,” Vadim snarls. “You lost your wife and son and you fell to pieces. A truepahkanwould never have let that destroy him. But you… you were weak. But despite that weakness, you were the elder brother, the rightfulpahkan, so I followed you. I supported you. I made it so that no one knew how far you’d fallen or how little you wanted to wear the crown. I led for you and gave you the credit. The reason the Oryolov Bratva still exists today is becauseIsaved it.” His hands are balled into fists and his voice is trembling from the weight of his emotion. “You knew the burden you’d placed on me even at that time. Which is why you promised to hand over power to me. ‘You’re the real pahkan, brother. You should lead them, not me.’Those were your words. Or do you deny it?”
There are tears in Fyodor’s eyes now. “I do not.”
Vadim nods with grim satisfaction. “You promised to turn the reins over to me—and then what did you do? You changed your mind and—without warning, without so much as a conversation—you announced that your twenty-one-year-old son would take over aspahkan.”
Fyodor’s looking down now, so I have no idea what he’s thinking. Hell, I probably wouldn’t have any idea even if he was looking right at me.
“You’re right, brother,” Fyodor whispers. “You’re right about everything. I did promise to make you my successor.”
Kirill is staring at me in shock. I just shake my head.
“Tell me: what changed your mind?” Vadim demands. “Why did you choose the boy over the man? After everything I had done to take care of you and your Bratva…”
Fyodor raises his head. There’s a wealth of emotion in his eyes and I can only pick out some. Sadness, definitely. Anger, yes. Regret, perhaps?
“The truth?”
Vadim’s eyes teeter to mine for only a moment before he wrenches them back to Fyodor. “Yes, the truth. It’s the least you can do for me now.”
Fyodor sighs. “At the end of the day… he is my son.”
Fuck.I’m not sure if it’s a terrible reason or the best one yet. I suppose it depends on which side of fatherhood you’re on.
Vadim nods. “I didn’t understand then. But I suppose, now, I do.”
I frown. “Why?”
“What do I always say?” he asks.
“Family is everything.”
He nods. “Exactly. Family is everything. I have always believed that and I always will.” A chill spreads through me as I start to put together the last piece of the puzzle.
How can I have been so damn blind?
“You chose your son, brother,” Vadim explains to Fyodor. “And I chose mine.”
“Adrik,” I whisper.
Kirill’s mouth is hanging open and Fyodor looks completely floored. “N-no,” Fyodor stammers. “That’s not possible. We knew his parents. Elisa and Gustav were friends.”
Vadim chuckles darkly. “They wereyourfriends. I guess you could say that I was a lot closer to Elisa than I was to Gustav.”
“Blyat’,” Fyodor croaks. “All these years… you had a son…”
“I didn’t find out myself until the boy was a teenager. Elisa told me just before the cancer took her. Gustav had already been gone for years. The boy had only me.”
“You should have told me.”
“Why?” Vadim scowls. “So you could turn my only son into your son’s stooge, just like you did to me? I wanted more for him than to play second fiddle. I didn’t want him to live in someone else’s shadow his entire life like I have.”
Both brothers are glaring at each other now. It’s strange to see two old men, both closer to the ends of their lives than the beginnings, with so much hate and sorrow in their hearts.
Vadim clears his throat. “When it came down to it, you chose your son over me. I did the same. You can’t fault me for that.”
